This collection of essays honours Prof. Harish Trivedi, by surveying the three fields to which he has made signal contributions – criticism of Indian literature, translation, and postcolonial studies. Eminent scholars, some of whom have shaped these fields, look back on the work of a lifetime, and a couple of younger scholars follow in their wake. The interconnectedness of the three fields emerges in some essays, while in others they retain their independent boundaries. Contested questions are discussed, as some scholars emphasize the centrality of pleasure to reading, while others insist on the need for literature to mould the reader in particular ways. This volume demonstrates the transnational scale of literary conversations about India (the contributors are connected to more than a dozen countries by birth, residence and work), and also the continuing vigour of several methodologies, from postcolonial neo-Marxism to Asian theories of poetics and rhetoric to close reading and historicism.


Ruth Vanita, Professor, University of Montana, former Reader, Delhi University, India, was founding coeditor of Manushi, India’s first nationwide feminist journal, from 1978 to 1990. She is the author of several books, including Sappho and the Virgin Mary: Same-Sex Love and the English Literary Imagination; Love’s Rite: Same-Sex Marriage in India and the West; Gandhi’s Tiger and Sita’s Smile: Essays on Gender, Culture and Sexuality; and A Play of Light: Selected Poems. With Saleem Kidwai, she edited Same-Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History. Her latest book, Gender, Sex and the City: Urdu Rekhti Poetry 1780-1870, appeared in 2012.